YouTube Blocks Access to Controversial Video in Egypt and Libya

YouTube Blocks Access to Controversial Video in Egypt and Libya

In an unusual move, YouTube announced today that it was blocking access to a video showing clips from "The Innocence of Muslims"—an anti-Islamic film that depicts Prophet Mohammed as a philanderer who approves of child abuse—after the film sparked violent protests in Egypt and Libya.

We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions. This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video—which is widely available on the web—is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube. However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt we have temporarily restricted access in both countries.

It is extremely rare for YouTube to restrict access to a video that, by the company's own admission, falls within its blocked YouTube altogether in order to prevent Afghans from seeing the video. "We have been told to shut down YouTube to the Afghan public until the video is taken down," Aimal Marjan, General Director of Information Technology at the Ministry of Communications, told Reuters. But pointing out that it could be worse is not a sufficient excuse for YouTube’s decision to limit freedom of expression on the Internet.

Internet companies have clashed with governments over offensive content before and will doubtless continue to do so into the future. Pakistan has been blocking websites for hosting content it deems offensive since 2007, when it blocked the entirety of Google-owned web-publishing platform Blogger. In 2010, Pakistan blocked Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook for hosting content related to a contest called "Draw Mohammed Day," in which participants were encouraged to depict the Prophet. The censorship did not end there. Just this May, Pakistan blocked Twitter because the site still displayed links to a version of the contest hosted on Facebook. The block lasted for a total of eight hours, but it inspired immediate outrage among Pakistanis, including Huma Yusuf, a columnist for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, who expressed fear that the block would be a precursor to Internet censorship surrounding the upcoming general election. In the end, Twitter held its ground and did not remove the links, but Facebook, which had been blocked in previous years, bowed to pressure by the Pakistani government and restricted content to users in Pakistan.

It is easy to understand why YouTube might feel compelled to act in response to the rioting over this video, especially after three U.S. embassy employees were killed in the Libyan city of Benghazi, but the blame for the violence lies not with the video, but with the perpetrators. Once YouTube has made the decision to pro-actively censor its content, they start down a slippery slope that ends in YouTube Knows Best moral policing of every video on their site. It is disappointing to see YouTube turn its back on policies that have allowed it to become a such a strong platform for freedom of expression. We hope that this new-found enthusiasm for pro-active censorship is a temporary aberration rather than a sign of things to come.

Related Updates

The century-old tradition that the Espionage Act not be used against journalistic activities has now been broken. Seventeen new charges were filed yesterday against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. These new charges make clear that he is being prosecuted for basic journalistic tasks, including being openly available to receive...

Earlier this year, a critical free speech law in Texas came under attack. Texas bill H.B. 2730, as introduced, would have gutted the Texas Citizens Protection Act, or TCPA. The TCPA has been one of the strongest laws in the nation protecting citizens against SLAPPs. SLAPP is a shorthand way...

A fight over unmasking an anonymous Reddit commenter has turned into a significant win for online speech and fair use. A federal court has affirmed the right to share copyrighted material for criticism and commentary, and shot down arguments that Internet users from outside the United States can’t...

Today we are launching TOSsed Out, a new iteration of EFF’s longstanding work in tracking and documenting the ways that Terms of Service (TOS) and other speech moderating rules are unevenly and unthinkingly applied to people by online services. As a result of these practices, posts are deleted and...

San Francisco—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched TOSsed Out, a project to highlight the vast spectrum of people silenced by social media platforms that inconsistently and erroneously apply terms of service (TOS) rules.TOSsed Out will track and publicize the ways in which TOS and other speech moderation rules...

When social media platforms enforce their content moderation rules unfairly, it affects everyone’s ability to speak out online. Unfair and inconsistent online censorship magnifies existing power imbalances, giving people who already have the least power in society fewer places where they are allowed a voice online.President Donald Trump...

In the wake of the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed fifty-one people and injured more than forty others, the New Zealand government has released a plan to combat terrorist and violent content online, dubbed the Christchurch Call. The Call has been endorsed by...

The Internet, and social media in particular, is uniquely designed to promote free expression, so much so that the Supreme Court has recognized social media as the “most important places” for speech and sharing viewpoints. Like most of us. government agencies and officials have created social media profiles and...

The First Amendment protects the public’s right to use electronic devices to record on-duty police officers, EFF argued in an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The case, Frasier v. Evans, was brought by Levi Frasier against five Denver police officers for...

San Francisco – On Monday, May 6 at 11am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will argue that a San Francisco court should quash a subpoena from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society aimed at getting the identity of an anonymous Reddit commenter. Watch Tower is the supervising body...